Museum of Ice Cream - Piñata

Piñata - Vanilla Ice Cream with Iced Animal Cookies, Frosted Cupcake Bites, Fizzy Cotton Candies, and Rainbow Sprinkles

Today we try another pint from the Museum of Ice Cream.  They're the brand that started off with interactive exhibits which has now partnered with Target to release seven flavors available in pints.  The first flavor was reviewed here.  Today's flavor is a bit more daring, it is called Piñata and features with all sorts of sugary mix-ins: frosted animal cookies, cupcake bites, cotton candy and sprinkles.

We all remember piñatas from childhood birthday parties but they have a long and storied history.  They date back as far as the 14th century where Christians would decorate an earthenware pot on the first Sunday of Lent.  The Spanish name piñata (or pignatta in Italian) came from the fact that the shape of the pot resembled a pine code.  They brought this custom to the New World only to find that the Aztecs and Mayans had similar customs for different events.  The practice of knocking open a piñata while blindfolded comes from the Mayans.  What does it mean to have a piñata-themed ice cream flavor?  It looks like the idea is to dig into vanilla ice cream until all these sugary mix-ins come out.  Let's see how this turns out.

Opening the pint, a few of the mix-ins are visible on top of the vanilla ice cream right away.  The mix-ins themselves are small in size and dispersed generously throughout the pint.  They are all very sweet.  They were pretty good, but with the exception of the animal cookies, I had trouble telling them apart.  With the animal cookies, I could tell it was a frosted animal cracker, but all of the rest tasted like little crumbly-crunchy bits of sugar -- not unlike the the type of hard frosting which is on the tops of decorative cakes.  This often happens with these types of 'kitchen sink' types of flavors --  I will be at first be a bit wowed by the litany of ingredients listed on the side of the carton but then  there enough of each ingredient for the flavor of any of them to stick out and then it all blends together in your mouth anyways.  The vanilla base played a supporting role here and served as an adequate vehicle for it all.

A piñata theme is a fun an imaginative idea for an ice cream flavor.  It is an extremely sweet flavor -- all of the mix-ins were very sugary -- so be prepared for that.  As mentioned above a lot of the mix-ins blended together, but if you have a sweet tooth and are in the mood for sprinkles and candied frosting pieces then this is a fun and youthful flavor.